Family Circus - A Birthday Book

I've been working on this book for six months at least (in between painting faces and a few other projects). I almost always have three or four things going for when I hit a wall with one project or another. A few of things going on here are the wire spine, the spray stenciled backgrounds and the cut and paste pages. I extracted and/or colored a few of the images from old sources but many were purchased as sets from Mischief Circus (previously called Deviant Scrap). I've used pieces from Itkupilli, TumbleFishStudio, MartaVanEck and MrWhiskers to name a few.

The cover of the book, as well as all of the pages, are tied onto a 1/4 mesh wire. I wrapped its edges with super suede to avoid cut fingers!

Pages 00 and 01 - the family tree and Grandpa Eddie, the ringmaster and co-owner of the circus.

Pages 02 and 03 - Grandma Ellie and Clem and Clyde, all images so far from Mischief Circus.

 

 

Pages 04 - 07 - The narrator's aunts and uncles. I started the book with the strong man, Francis, and an embellished story of an incident from my son Kevin's childhood. That's why the book became a gift for him! I extracted and colored and put together from pieces both of the characters on that spread.

Pages 08 - 11 - The narrator (with the fish), his other grandparents and his parents. The tall man with his head in the clouds was the most interesting Photoshop challenge of the book.

Pages 12 - 13 - The narrator's bothers and sister's (plus a little glimpse of him) and the Bird Lady, Lillian. I think I showed her in another post as I was learning to color old black and white images.

 

 

 

Pages 14 - 18 plus back cover inside - Various relatives and friends of relatives who joined the circus in their respective times. These pages were all a "circus" to create, all technical issues (glues, finishes, etc.) aside and I love every one of them but my absolute favorite is the bright pink and red one in this set of pictures showing the New Orleans jazz band and the Hoochie Koochie Kittens. If you click on any picture you can read the stories.                         

 

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